Assembling the Bloody Reaver

As much as I like the Dreadfleet box contents there were two ships I knew would be a pain in the ass to assemble and paint. Those are the Bloody Reaver and the Heldenhammer. Both are capitol ships and a lot bigger than the rest of the ships found in the box. Furthermore, both ships have completely whacky design which can cause headache by just looking at them.

The Bloody Reaver was my long planned choice of "first ship" because I figure that if I paint the two most difficult and time consuming ships first , then the rest of the boxed set till be a downhill stroll.

Most of the other ships are made up of 4-5 parts. This ship has a couple more, what's worse is as already stated the intricate design which pretty much forces you to clean and assemble sections of the ship - paint them separately - and then glue them together step by step as you get done. A problem with this approach is that you will be left with quite a few gaps and visible joints - if that drives you mad then you are forced to assemble the whole ship and greenstuff it. But if you do the later, you will have pure hell trying to paint this ship, trust me on that.


In any case, the ship design from a model makers perspective is way too advanced for newbie/casual gamers or people who have grown comfortable with not havingto assemble miniatures (metal/resin minis). Here, everything has to be put together in a specific order, there are joints, snap fit and holes for everything. You also have to realize how tiny the scale of this ship is, so the castle and a couple of other areas will require almost impressionistic painting style to make sense from a tabletop distance.

In case you wonder about what's is going on with the ship design from a story perspective, it is essentially the castle of the vampire count Noctilus (main villain in the game) who grew restless of the life in landlocked Sylvania. So one day he conjured up all his magical powers to lift the building from the ground together with the cliff it stood upon and dumped it in a ship graveyard where the living dead labored away to make a scratch built floating fortress. Now the "Bloody Reaver" sails the seas, being the capitol ship of the "Dreadfleet" - a fleet of various undead captains belonging to the evil races of the Warhammer universe.


I will post pictures of the painted up ship tomorrow. Btw, building and painting this ship reminded me of the cartoon TV series "Pirates of Dark Water" which I used to watch as a kid. Cartoons back in the 90's were awesome when I think about it.